No ceremony, just one for everyone. More than 2,000 employees, regardless of rank or performance, each received a 5-gram 24K pure gold bracelet. The moment it landed in his hand, Hu Shu (pseudonym), a campus recruit who had only joined two months earlier, felt "ready to give everything for Moonton."
Moonton Technology's confidence stems from the performance of its core product, the MOBA mobile game MLBB (Mobile Legends: Bang Bang). Data from Sensor Tower shows the game's cumulative global revenue has reached nearly US$2.4 billion, with overseas revenue surging 122% year-on-year in January 2026. According to Moonton's official website, its cumulative global registered users have surpassed 1.5 billion, with peak monthly active users exceeding 110 million.
The bracelet given to every employee is a commemorative edition for MLBB's tenth anniversary. It arrived at a delicate moment: in March, ByteDance sold Moonton Technology in full to Savvy Games Group (hereafter "Savvy"), a subsidiary of Saudi sovereign wealth fund PIF, for over US$6 billion. Seven months after being sold, Moonton Technology has stepped into the spotlight for the first time, but gold cannot solve product problems: competition in the MOBA arena is intensifying, and what will sustain MLBB for its next decade?
Five Grams of Gold and a Tenth Anniversary
"Everyone below the stage was ecstatic," one Moonton employee joked to a reporter about colleagues' reactions while collecting their gold bracelets. Recently, Moonton Technology fulfilled a promise made at its early 2026 annual meeting, distributing a 5-gram 24K pure gold bracelet to each of its more than 2,000 employees. The bracelets, custom-made by Chow Tai Fook, feature exclusive embossed designs from the game IP, weigh about 10 kilograms in total, and carry a material value of nearly 10 million yuan.
"We knew about it long in advance, so everyone was fairly calm, though of course still very happy," one employee told a reporter. According to multiple employees, there was no elaborate ceremony at the collection site; employees simply queued at the service desk to pick up their gift. The distribution "did not look at rank or performance" — every formal employee who joined before a specified date (including campus recruits who had signed contracts) received one, and the company even mailed the generous gift to employees who had already resigned.
Moonton Technology's generosity is inseparable from its core product's performance. As the company's flagship product, MLBB has extended its reach to more than 220 countries and regions worldwide, accumulating over 1.5 billion registered users and peak monthly active users exceeding 110 million. In terms of commercial performance, Sensor Tower data shows its cumulative global revenue has approached US$2.4 billion. 2026 coincides with the tenth anniversary of MLBB's launch. In October, MLBB's tenth-anniversary global celebration offline events were held simultaneously in ten countries. At the same time, MLBB not only became the first officially announced title for the inaugural Esports Nations Cup, but is also one of the esports events at the 2026 Aichi-Nagoya Asian Games. In January, the seventh world finals (M7) were held in Jakarta, Indonesia, with peak viewership reaching 5.68 million, setting a new record for global mobile esports events.
Bidding farewell to ByteDance's "double harvest" of traffic and revenue formed the foundation for Moonton's gold bracelet giveaway. Behind the generosity lies Moonton Technology's recently settled capital upheaval. In March 2026, ByteDance sold Moonton Technology, which became a wholly owned subsidiary of Savvy. In an internal letter announcing the deal, Moonton Technology CEO Zhang Yunfan promised that after the transaction closed, based on historical performance contributions, the company would provide employees with multiple incentive plans, including accelerating the vesting and distribution of certain historically granted long-term incentives, as well as launching new attractive incentive schemes based on future performance.
Before being sold, Moonton Technology spent five years under ByteDance. In 2021, ByteDance acquired Moonton Technology for approximately US$4 billion. The buyer, Savvy, was established in 2021 as a gaming investment subsidiary set up by Saudi sovereign wealth fund PIF. In recent years, Savvy has frequently acted in the global gaming M&A landscape, including acquiring mobile game publisher Scopely for US$4.9 billion, acquiring AR landmark game developer Niantic through Scopely for US$3.5 billion, purchasing esports platforms ESL and FACEIT and merging them into EFG, and investing 1.8 billion yuan in Chinese esports company VSPO in 2023. In addition, Savvy holds shares in several well-known gaming companies including Nintendo, Capcom, and Take-Two.
"Saudi Arabia is going all out to develop its esports economy, hoping to open a second battlefield beyond its oil economy. Right now it urgently needs its own esports blockbuster to build a differentiated moat in the global esports rivalry," Zhang Shule, an expert at the China Economic Media Think Tank, analyzed for a reporter. For Moonton Technology, this acquisition is expected to further elevate its position in mainstream overseas markets, and MLBB will inevitably occupy the C position in subsequent planning for the world's top-tier comprehensive esports events.
Zhang Yi, CEO and chief analyst of iiMedia Consulting, believes this is essentially a move to exchange capital for mobile esports and localized publishing capabilities in Southeast Asia, filling in Saudi Arabia's shortcomings in its Asian layout. But Zhang Yi also noted that "Moonton Technology's future global expansion still depends on whether it can break through in European and American markets, and whether new product iterations succeed."
Dependence on a Single Blockbuster
Although this round of benefits has boosted internal morale, Moonton Technology still faces tests in terms of products and industry track. Zhang Yi pointed out to a reporter that "the current MOBA track is highly concentrated — domestically it's a dual monopoly of Honor of Kings and League of Legends, while in overseas markets MLBB dominates Southeast Asia. Among these, esports ecosystems, cross-platform capabilities, and localized operations have become key to competition."
Zhang Shule believes that "the overall MOBA market is relatively stable at present, with a few top games occupying the mainstream. Without disruptive innovation in game gameplay, there won't be major changes. Chinese MOBA has firmly secured the C position globally. If Honor of Kings's base is mainly domestic, MLBB is spreading from Southeast Asia deep into the Eurasian continent."
This highly concentrated landscape is particularly evident in the performance data of leading manufacturers. According to Tencent's Q2 2026 financial data, the company's domestic market gaming revenue was approximately 47.3 billion yuan, with representative games including Delta Force, Valorant, Valorant: Source Energy, and Roco Kingdom: World; international market gaming revenue was approximately 18.6 billion yuan, mainly driven by Wuthering Waves and VALORANT. Sensor Tower data shows that as of the end of June 2026, Honor of Kings's cumulative global in-app purchase revenue had exceeded US$17.5 billion, firmly ranking first in cumulative total revenue among global mobile games.
In contrast, Moonton Technology's revenue is highly concentrated in a single product. Media disclosures show that approximately 86% of Moonton Technology's revenue comes from MLBB. Regarding the above revenue proportion data, a reporter sent an interview request to Moonton Technology, but as of press time, the company had not replied.
Regarding the hidden concern of a single product, Zhang Shule judged that "a single blockbuster can indeed mean all glory or all ruin, but at this stage the problem isn't significant. Esports blockbuster games often have life cycles exceeding 15 years, and MLBB still has considerable momentum. Moonton Technology's challenge is how to move from a single blockbuster to dual blockbusters, jumping out of the red ocean of MOBA — after all, an evergreen top-tier gaming company needs at least two super blockbusters."
Given the highly concentrated domestic competitive landscape, overseas markets have become an important path for Chinese gaming companies seeking growth. Data from the Game Publishing Committee of the China Audio-video and Digital Publishing Association shows that in the first half of 2026, the actual overseas market revenue of domestically developed games reached US$12.372 billion, up 30.22% year-on-year. Cutting-edge technologies such as AI are also becoming key to game manufacturers breaking through.
Zhang Yi believes the biggest change AI brings is the systemic reconstruction of the entire chain, from asset generation and global content translation to automated advertising and NPC (non-player character) interaction. "When AI efficiency becomes standard, the real barrier will gradually shift to the ability to understand user needs and the ability to generate cultural resonance."
A reporter sent an interview request to Moonton Technology by email regarding business synergies after the Saudi capital takeover and new game reserves, but had not received a reply as of press time.
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